. . .
The only difference this time is that the USA and Israel were made to
walk out in a huff, unable to play the roles of anti-racist leaders
of the free world, which made the conference a far more politically
provocative spectacle than otherwise. Yoshie
This is pretty thin gruel. I read the document
quickly, but from what I could see the US was
not treated very roughly at all. For one thing,
the words "United States" do not appear in the
document.
Under an admittedly improbably regime of common
sense, the conference could have said no country
is perfect and all have legacies that are stained
in one way or another, but here are the top ten
cases of racial oppression today, naming names,
and why don't we all try and do something about
it. To me, the political impact of vitriol re:
a particular country (including Israel) is much
less than an explicit recognition of cases worth
attention.
I suspect it would have been difficult for the
U.S. to walk out if a diverse catalog of racism
in other countries was elevated to
the same plane as U.S. and Israeli racism.
Snip out the mentions of Israel and Palestine
and what you had left in the document was that
there's lots of racism everywhere but nowhere
in particular, and can't we all get along.
mbs
